Healthy
Perspectives
Helping your dog
beat the heat
this summer
Being in the thick of a Florida summer
often means sweating as soon as the
door opens. Even a trip to the car can
mean the difference between a great hair day
and a soggy, frizzy mass of wet hair. You can
forget wearing a suit or fancy dress, you’ll just
look like a hot mess when you arrive at your
destination. While sweating can be a real
nuisance, do you ever wonder what it would be like
if we didn’t perspire?
Sweating is the way our bodies keep our
temperature regulated. When your body starts
to heat up, your brain reacts by
releasing sweat from the more than
2.5 million eccrine glands spread out across
nearly all of your body. When sweat
evaporates off the skin and turns into a gas, it
cools your temperature.
That’s why heat is a much bigger problem for
dogs than humans. A hot summer day to us can be
almost unbearable for dogs, who often have heavy
coats of fur and no way to sweat, with the exception
of a bit that is released from their paw
pads. As enjoyable as it can be to take our pets
with us everywhere, it is often best to leave
them home in the summer.
According to the American Veterinary
Medical Association, hundreds of pets die
in this country each year from hyperthermia.
Most of those deaths result from a pet being left
in a hot car, but some are simply from being kept
in an environment where they cannot escape the
sun or cool down suffi ciently.
By Marcy Shortuse
DOGS